Game Freak hit with another hack, info leaking

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I really don't get why anyone would consider "keep the highly popular set of super form designs around" this comically absurd, unrealistic expectation. Regular drops of new Megas would be nice, but if their well of ideas once again runs dry after Legends Z-A then fine, same thing happened with cross-gen evos after Sinnoh and while I'm happy they eventually started those up again at least Magmortar, Probopass, Gallade etc. weren't just arbitrarily dropped for over half a decade.
It's pretty clear that they stopped giving new evolutions to old Pokemon because megas ate up all the design space for them. Probably not a coincidence that old stuff got to evolve again once they were out of the picture.

Imagine if Gen VI had given every 1-2 stage non-legendary Pokemon that got a mega a real evolution instead. It would have equaled if not exceeded the batch of cross-gen evolutions from Gen IV, and increased the lackluster roster of new Pokemon in Gen VI by something like 30%.

Mawile and Lopunny got amazing buffs and then went right back to sucking. This is stupid and not a concern for any regular Pokemon, evolution or regional form!
I also want Mawile to be good (and really like Mega Mawile as a design), that's why I wanted Mega Mawile to be a new, permanent Pokemon instead of a temporary form change.
 
I will agree that megas have an extra unappealing side to them because of how much design space they consume. XY, while showing much more interesting design sensibilities that would shape gen 7 and onwards, has one of the most boring dexes of the 3ds gens because half of the time they were designing some new mega. It'd be less annoying if megas weren't creatively bankrupt and ugly, but unfortunately they are, so i hope after this game they get shelved forever in the mainline games LOL
 
It's pretty clear that they stopped giving new evolutions to old Pokemon because megas ate up all the design space for them. Probably not a coincidence that old stuff got to evolve again once they were out of the picture.

Imagine if Gen VI had given every 1-2 stage non-legendary Pokemon that got a mega a real evolution instead. It would have equaled if not exceeded the batch of cross-gen evolutions from Gen IV, and increased the lackluster roster of new Pokemon in Gen VI by something like 30%.


I also want Mawile to be good (and really like Mega Mawile as a design), that's why I wanted Mega Mawile to be a new, permanent Pokemon instead of a temporary form change.
Making Mega Evolution exclusive to Legendary Pokémon like Mewtwo, three-stage evolutions like fully evolved Kanto and Hoenn starters, as well as several two-stagers that can succeed in their own in-game like Gyarados and Steelix, would at least help for a lot more consistent decision philosophy and not cause plot holes like how a weak Pokémon like Sableye or a non-battling Pokémon like Audino can utilize Mega Evolution without suffering even worse than others in theory.

It can end up limiting the potential candidates a bit too much, but it does means less Pokémon to be left behind as plausible Mega Evolutuon candidates.
I will agree that megas have an extra unappealing side to them because of how much design space they consume. XY, while showing much more interesting design sensibilities that would shape gen 7 and onwards, has one of the most boring dexes of the 3ds gens because half of the time they were designing some new mega. It'd be less annoying if megas weren't creatively bankrupt and ugly, but unfortunately they are, so i hope after this game they get shelved forever in the mainline games LOL
Gigantamax forms are worse in this aspect, because at least Mega Evolution offered an Ability change and occasionally a new secondary type, or removed Rock in Mega Aggron’s case.

Gigantamax, meanwhile, is only superficially different from Dynamax due to design and different G-Max moves, some of which are worse than their Max Move counterpart. If those also grant a different Ability and even type change, people would be more invested into wanting one. As of now, I argue those are even bigger waste of design space than Mega Evolution. I do agree that several of the Mega Evolutions design feels uninspired though.

I also agree that XY’s dexes feels weak, partly because of how much GF undermined the new additions by repeating mistakes of Gold and Silver for different reasons.

I’m not the only one who’s glad there’s no exclusive Tera forms except for two special cases (Ogerpon and Terapagos), in favor of the Paradox Pokémon which also shares their origin with Terastalization in Area Zero. One can argue Paradox Pokémon runs a similar issue to Megas but at least Paradox Pokémon are their own species and not super form changes, thus possibly available in a future mainline game as they don’t require Terastalization to be available.
 
As of now, I argue those are even bigger waste of design space than Mega Evolution
disagree, gmaxes look to have a lesser impact on the gen 8 dex, which is much more robust and finalized, especially when you consider how few legendaries/not-legendary-but-also-kinda there are taking dex spots, compared to every other 3d gen around it. it clearly didn't need much time spent designing new forms and the lack of different types abilities etc is most likely why, beyond the designs being a lot more straightfoward and designed as an extra flavor instead of being a new forme
 
My take on Megas: TPC's never been a stranger to tacking on weird explanations for evolutions/forms that simply couldn't happen in prior gens like Baby Pokemon from Incense after their "parent" Pokemon debuted, having to contrive items even when they're not region specific (why do only Paldean Bisharp have Leader's Crests to trigger Kingambit?), Meltan just flat out not-evolving outside of Go, or Gigantamax just inventing a separate factor to explain Max-capable species or members of said Species (Duraludon can't go to SV without removing the Factor due to Archaludon, as opposed to Arch having it but not being able to G-Max if it ever went into a Max-game).

So to this I say: screw it, Mega Evolution is not an excuse to not revisit or expand on a Pokemon and it's scapegoating the mechanic to say otherwise. Just keep the Mega stone to working on that form and make the evolution if you want to. I doubt adding 100 Stats is on the table for most of them, and Eviolite + the dozen Pikachu/Eevee promotions clearly shows an evolved form doesn't stop them from supporting/favoring/marketing pre-evos.

Here's the reality of the situation: Some Pokemon just aren't going to get new Evos or support past one or two passes unless they're already popular and self-marketing. Mawile having a Mega isn't what stops it from getting a new Evolution, it's the fact that a Chompwile is for a niche enough audience that the Bean Counters would just prefer a new creature to sell toys and cards of.
 
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My take on Megas: TPC's never been a stranger to tacking on weird explanations for evolutions/forms that simply couldn't happen in prior gens like Baby Pokemon from Incense after their "parent" Pokemon debuted, having to contrive items even when they're not region specific (why do only Paldean Bisharp have Leader's Crests to trigger Kingambit?), Meltan just flat out not-evolving outside of Go, or Gigantamax just inventing a separate factor to explain Max-capable species or members of said Species (Duraludon can't go to SV without removing the Factor due to Archaludon).

So to this I say: screw it, Mega Evolution is not an excuse to not revisit or expand on a Pokemon and it's scapegoating the mechanic to say otherwise. Just keep the Mega stone to working on that form and make the evolution if you want to. I doubt adding 100 Stats is on the table for most of them, and Eviolite + the dozen Pikachu/Eevee promotions clearly shows an evolved form doesn't stop them from supporting/favoring/marketing pre-evos.

Here's the reality of the situation: Some Pokemon just aren't going to get new Evos or support past one or two passes unless they're already popular and self-marketing. Mawile having a Mega isn't what stops it from getting a new Evolution, it's the fact that a Chompwile is for a niche enough audience that the Bean Counters would just prefer a new creature to sell toys and cards of.
It's honestly pretty convenient that the player keeps interacting with people on the cutting edge of in-universe science. A pretty good number of details can easily be retconned with "we thought this was correct but [new thing] proved otherwise."
 
On the subject of Kalos, there's another thing I've thought about regarding the teraleak contents.

So, the big takeaway from all that was XY needed another year of development, which y'know fair enough even though we kinda knew that already. But buried within the documentation is what I consider a very underrated failure point: They spent pretty much the whole cycle assuming Z was still happening. For example, Southern Kalos was noted as being moved to the followup game, and they were already conceiving of Zygarde's forms for said followup. If they didn't find out the bad news after development was finished, then it must've been so late that there was no time to meaningfully adjust anything.

With that in mind, imagine if on the night before pre-production began Masuda had a phone call or face-to-face meeting where he was told the schedule for the next few years was gonna be too tight for an enhanced Gen 6 game: You get one shot at this, nothing else. What do you think they would have done differently? Two things come to mind for me:

1) Zygarde would've been shoved into the plot somehow, a la SWSH Eternatus. If necessary, maybe they would've reworked it to be a more standard 680 BST Legendary so they wouldn't have to worry about how to implement all its forms.

2) Mega Evolution would've been more accessible and prominent in boss fights - if not in the main game with appropriate story rewrites then I'm sure that they would've quickly cobbled together some Gym Leader rematches where they each got to show off a Mega of their type
 
Mawile having a Mega isn't what stops it from getting a new Evolution, it's the fact that a Chompwile is for a niche enough audience that the Bean Counters would just prefer a new creature to sell toys and cards of.

I feel like there’ve been more than enough quirky unloved picks for cross-gen evolutions as of late to doubt that this is the big obstacle. Like, did Girafarig and Ursaring really have such a meaningfully larger audience than Mawile?
 
On the subject of Kalos, there's another thing I've thought about regarding the teraleak contents.

So, the big takeaway from all that was XY needed another year of development, which y'know fair enough even though we kinda knew that already. But buried within the documentation is what I consider a very underrated failure point: They spent pretty much the whole cycle assuming Z was still happening. For example, Southern Kalos was noted as being moved to the followup game, and they were already conceiving of Zygarde's forms for said followup. If they didn't find out the bad news after development was finished, then it must've been so late that there was no time to meaningfully adjust anything.

With that in mind, imagine if on the night before pre-production began Masuda had a phone call or face-to-face meeting where he was told the schedule for the next few years was gonna be too tight for an enhanced Gen 6 game: You get one shot at this, nothing else. What do you think they would have done differently? Two things come to mind for me:

1) Zygarde would've been shoved into the plot somehow, a la SWSH Eternatus. If necessary, maybe they would've reworked it to be a more standard 680 BST Legendary so they wouldn't have to worry about how to implement all its forms.

2) Mega Evolution would've been more accessible and prominent in boss fights - if not in the main game with appropriate story rewrites then I'm sure that they would've quickly cobbled together some Gym Leader rematches where they each got to show off a Mega of their type
I think the Looker plotline would have been rewritten to involve Zygarde; the firing of the weapon and awakening if Xerneas/Yveltal would make a good lead-in to it and it'd give an excuse to leave the city. I don't think it would have been anything ground breaking, and probably still hit the same beats the base game did (remnants of Flare, Emma's expansion suit) just with more purpose behind it and an excuse to dive into the Terminus Cave.
Perhaps they would have fast tracked a super form?

Hard to say if they'd have done "proper" rematches or not, but I think if they didn't put megas on their first teams (i'd probably put them on at least Olympia, Wulfric & the E4) then the Chateau would have added them. At minimum, I think they would have added a proepr Round 2 to the E4 like ORAS would do.

I don't know if they would have tweaked other things. It's easy to say how Lysandre would be handled (toning down his speeches and showing off more of his philanthropy and pain aka the thing every other appearence of Lysandre does) in a would-be Z version, but would that have only happened after being able to chew on it and feedback over 2 years like Cyrus got, you know? It's possibel they thought it was fine as-is. The limited team compositions feel very baked in and possibly something Z would have kept, much less a "oh no, we're not doing Z!" panic sweep.
 
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Bara fans:
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Anyone figured out what IP the scrapped Gen 6 Peanut mon was considered too similar to?
 
(what does bara mean)
Extremely beefy, thick men, often exaggerated around the torso specifically. There's other traits that might get associated with it (fat, body hair, just about anything you could attribute to masculinity etc) but that's the gist.
So a bara artist might see the fit lithe Brawly and then really pump him up to fit the aesthetic. You can kind of see it as the guy version of "artist takes a woman character and exaggerates their breasts or butt or posing).

It's also generally the wheel house of gay men. iirc bara is japanese for rose, and roses are get associated with gay men the same way lillies are with women. I also think there's some back & forth on if you should even call ti bara but whatever it's engtrenched at this point.
 
Later localization docs note Stanwick being intended to be Mr. Stone's first name, apparently thought by Masuda

However Eng RSE never mentions this, and Eng dub simply refers to him as President. Interestingly, TV Guides note his first name, suggesting that TCPi did give 4Kids info of chars, despite it being unused

Since ORAS this has been retconned as "Joseph" for first name, but the alliterative connection to Steven in OG is funny

Edit: Joseph was ironically an early name considered in RS dev, so ORAS revisited this. Corrected time
 
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Hopium route is that much like how Legends Arceus "re-launched" cross-gen evos, Z-A will mark an enduring return for Mega Evolution to the main series. That game will have its own big batch and then from Gen 10 onward they'll routinely add 3-5 new ones each game until they run out of ideas again, at which point they just keep supporting the oldies like they always should've done

Please, please no. :blobnauseated:
 
If mega evolutions DO come back in gen 10 and have new mega forms, I hope it's given to something that is fully evolved but still ass in competitive and that it will have a viable niche/use whether in VGC or something (I.E. Furfrou or Stoutland) and not too much of those marketing purposes since they are popular already (I unfortunately expect there to be a Mega Cnarizard Z even if I hate the idea of one :blobsad:)
Please, please no. :blobnauseated:
Lol kind of mixed about this one but atleast we can ban megas one-by-one in a metagame instead of people arguing on the ban of one generational gimmick like what is happening to Terastal earlier in the meta.

Anyways, Merry Christmas or Hanukkah or whatever you celebrate December for, and may Legends Z-A not be rushed! ^^
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I know I'm late to the party but holy shit Alolan Rhydon makes so much more sense as an eletrical type than Alolan Golem. They could've made it look like a bulldozer type machine and with an Alolan Rhyperior they could've made the whole line feel much more consistent than it is today.
I don’t want to disappoint you but GF didn’t even planned an Alolan Rhyperior given that information about it is explicitly missing and / or explicitly said that it’s not happening even if Alolan Rhydon is approved.

As said earlier, having Alolan Rhyhorn + Rhydon, and Alolan Scyther, but not their respective evo would only worsen the resentement over the fact that only Kanto Pokémon has Alola forms back in SM and no new ones added in USUM.
 
I don’t want to disappoint you but GF didn’t even planned an Alolan Rhyperior given that information about it is explicitly missing and / or explicitly said that it’s not happening even if Alolan Rhydon is approved.

As said earlier, having Alolan Rhyhorn + Rhydon, and Alolan Scyther, but not their respective evo would only worsen the resentement over the fact that only Kanto Pokémon has Alola forms back in SM and no new ones added in USUM.
That's such a pity though. They could have added more forms in USUM.
 
Apparently the leaker has returned with the Source Code for SV and Home. See you in a few years when we get the first few mods of this.
I think SV's already had mods by this point. Dunno how much source code helps on mod-front in general...I mean obviously it has to help to some extent, but I don't think other source code leaks have really caused a mod-boom that already existed.


Anyway supposedly the code was also scrubbed of anything pertaining to future updates/Z-A, so I'm curious what all winds up being found & what the leaker(s) fucked up on.
 
The best thing about the source code leaking is that it presents the possibility of a fan made version running natively on other hardware, like PC, somewhere down the line. In addition to making modding in general easier because you have the source code rather than having to reverse engineer things.

Nintendo would probably obliterate anyone working on it from orbit, but at least the potential is there.
 
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